It's not every day that an existential crisis comes dressed up as a golden opportunity, said Michael Buerke, as he drew us into the programme which puts a gilded costume on every moral issue. As a long-time volunteer and – dare I say it – charity professional, a grim fascination with the promised charities v "big society" face-off compelled me to listen to Wednesday's edition of The Moral Maze

Expert witnesses representing public services and charities were pressed about the distinguishing moral features of charities, but we were also reminded that, along with passion, care and compassion, the moral high-ground is not the exclusive preserve of charity do-gooders. Let's face it, the panel seemed to say, charities aren't that special, sometimes losing the plot, their virtue, or both.

Michael Portillo said that charities have a double accountability both to those who give so generously, and to those who receive their help, with the implication that "mission drift" – losing sight of the best interests of beneficiaries in the pursuit of donations – is a fundamental problem. Criticising some charities for cosying up to the public sector and others for yielding to pressure from funders is not new.

But what makes charities special is that we constantly have to make the case for support – financial or otherwise. According to NCVO research more than three-quarters of charities get no money from the state. This keeps charities accountable to the public, not the public purse, and in a good position to speak truth to power, as Sir Stephen Bubb from the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations attested.

The moral decisions about who to help are ultimately made not by charities but the public. It's up to us to choose whether we give to squirrels or the mentally ill, as regular panellist Clare Fox neatly put it. If we should be worried that the big society means that donkeys end up with more support than suicidal humans, it's the ethical position of society in general that should be scrutinised.

A recurring theme was an idea that voluntarism and caring is being squeezed out by professionalism. Charity volunteers can take pride in high standards as they work alongside professionals. Ultimately no one could agree whether volunteering is healthy or declining in the UK or if charity volunteers should be more or less professional than paid staff. Voluntarism is not the exclusive preserve of charities; the legal, health and education systems rely on freely given time and effort from you, me and our neighbours to work well. Yet charities are somehow expected to take their public-spirited volunteers on to a different moral plane, the best being quirky and far from the bureaucratic edifices of Whitehall.

In the final minutes of the programme Michael Burke sought clarity about who judges where resources should be allocated, if charities – and not the state – are in charge.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, pointed out this is one of the dangers of the big society approach, as local charities are by no means evenly or fairly distributed across the country. We need large charities with national reach to support the most deprived areas, which are least likely to have the volunteering capacity to meet their own needs.

Catherine Prisk, assistant director of Play England reminded: "In the last few years we have seen a large growth across the charitable sector, but it still makes up less than 3% of overall employment. It was largely protected from the previous recession, but now faces extremely tough times as funding is cut swiftly by both the public purse and by the larger grant-givers. The 'voluntary sector' is far larger, incorporating the many thousands that don't get paid. Volunteering is far more common in areas of wealth and with larger numbers of middle-class ex-professionals (such as west Oxfordshire) than in inner-city areas like Knowsley or Hackney."

Our guides through the moral maze seemed reluctant to grasp the differences between organisations and people. They got too tangled up in their misgivings about charities undertaking public contracts as part of their own mixed economies of funding, and the motivations of those of us that work in the charity sector, instead of focussing on whether we all, as a society, have forgotten the meaning of charity.

Charities are the formal organisations in the loose and baggy monster of the voluntary and community sector. They rely on the same altruism, generosity and love that underpin our public services. What makes them special is the freedom to respond to our compassionate urge, even if that means we can be characterised as hippyish, amateur or hopeless. Representing small charities, Emma Harrison claimed they are for "whatever the people with a passion to make a difference decide to do". And she is right – this is the meaning of charity. Civil society can't be killed off by the withdrawal of state services.

People don't need a big society to bestow power. We already have it.

Tweeting from @commutiny, Roxanne calls for bold leadership in civil society. She is a life Fellow of the RSA and a member of the Leadership2020 Commission which is exploring the challenges of charity leadership in the next decade.